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Sunken Thinned Gaunt Face from Braces
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Sunken Thinned Gaunt Face from Braces
mommab84April 27, 2019
At 34 i decided to get braces to correct my deep overbite. Now, after a year of treatment, my cheeks and temples are completely sunken in. While my teeth look great, my face looks terrible. Looking back, it began when I started treatment and thinned out a little each month. A few months in I read some stories online about this happening to others, so I considered stopping treatment and brought it up to my ortho, who insisted that it wouldn't happen to me. Now that it has, my ortho says it isn't that bad and it must be something else, not the braces. I have aged 15 years in one year. My skin is saggy and I have hollowed out cheeks and loose skin on my face and neck. This has been devastating for me.
I believe the older you are, the worse this is. If I had braces as a teen, this wouldn't have been an issue. I did not lose weight or have teeth extracted. I believe this is worse with a deep overbite. If you have an open bite or under bite it doesn't seem to happen. If you have a fat face to begin with, you may like the change. Or if your teeth are horribly crooked, you may be so glad to have straight teeth that you don't mind. But if your teeth aren't that bad, like mine, and you like your face and are in your 30s or older, don't do it! I wish I could go back to that day so bad and tell myself not to do it! I am so sick over this. Look at before and after photos of adult braces, and look at the faces instead of the teeth. Almost all of them have thinner faces and look way older. Whether you have teeth extracted or not! If you want to see photos, pm me and I'll share them, I'm just not comfortable putting them out there.
I believe the older you are, the worse this is. If I had braces as a teen, this wouldn't have been an issue. I did not lose weight or have teeth extracted. I believe this is worse with a deep overbite. If you have an open bite or under bite it doesn't seem to happen. If you have a fat face to begin with, you may like the change. Or if your teeth are horribly crooked, you may be so glad to have straight teeth that you don't mind. But if your teeth aren't that bad, like mine, and you like your face and are in your 30s or older, don't do it! I wish I could go back to that day so bad and tell myself not to do it! I am so sick over this. Look at before and after photos of adult braces, and look at the faces instead of the teeth. Almost all of them have thinner faces and look way older. Whether you have teeth extracted or not! If you want to see photos, pm me and I'll share them, I'm just not comfortable putting them out there.
Replies (12)
April 27, 2019
This happened to me too and I thought I was the only one. I’m so sorry I didn’t share my experience earlier so that you might not have had to go through it too!
April 28, 2019
That is ok, because I would not have even looked here before I got them. I found this site because I'm looking into having fat transferred to my face to possibly reverse the damage, and thought I should warn others. It doesn't seem to be an issue for many, but for us it was. I'm sorry it happened to you too. Did you find any way to get your face back?
September 15, 2019
I went through the exact same thing with an orthodontist in Toronto - I did extraction-retraction as an adult. This is such a common practice that I never would have even imagined that this could affect the face so drastically. As a lay person, you're oblivious to the dramatic changes 3 or 4 mm of movement, and the accompanying bone loss, can have on your soft tissue. I was also unlucky in the orthodontist I chose, as despite having several years of experience, he seemed to be unaware of, or indifferent to how this kind of treatment affects the face. He only cared about straightening the teeth. He just reinforced my naive and mistaken belief that this type of procedure results in minimal changes to the face, or upper lip. So, horror of horrors, we actually maximized retraction, making the damage even worse. I was devastated, and I had a narcissistic orthodontist, that just didn't care, resented me, and was quite derisive - horrible practitioner and human being. He just saw straight teeth and thus had done his job. Kind of ruined my life in the process - I've completely lost my confidence. It looks absolutely horrible.
January 1, 2020
Hi is there any way you could directly message me I’m in Toronto as well and this sounds an awful lot like my orthodontist.. same thing happened to me.
Thank you for sharing your experience. I hope you find support in the community.